Merry early Christmas! If I may be allowed to ramble for a bit...
Somehow I still haven't asked Fila to take down my old webpage from college that's still on the servers here. I took a look at my
old customs the other day in preparation for releasing this pack, and I immediately cringed, especially at the backstories. Much of that dates back to college over 15 years ago, and really there's a lot of high school Cale in it as well, since several of the trucks started as doodles on the margins of my notebooks. And, if you read between the lines, there were some adolescent crushes that acted as inspiration for some of the designs and themes (I've since gotten
much,
much more transparent in my art). Even still, those trucks took on their own personalities for me over time - I've redone a bunch of them at least a couple of times, this is round 5 for The Ride, finally switching it over to the color scheme I had initially in my head when I sketched it before a Calc lecture.
Just like almost 2 decades ago, after spending so much time on replicas it's been nice to dive back into customs. These trucks are a massive creative release for me, and I still, after all this time, find ways that they inspire me. These specific re-dos have been something of an exercise, trying to bring them back to 1998 rather than making them look contemporary. I like constraints like that. I used the trucks I had already made for the HD pack with the exception of Expect No Mercy, that's the body of a stalled AM/PM Boss project repurposed to give it the retro look I like for that truck. There's one new addition, Copperhead, again loosely inspired by a girl I knew back when, though I'm surprised the name hasn't been used on a real truck yet.
I've released the trucks individually, but I've also put them in a pack so they can just be mounted at once. They work seamlessly with the other HD trucks, and thanks to Legend_of_Wii, they have custom AI Army sound files. All trucks have low-detail models with 64x64 textures, so even in a pack they don't lag much.
Thank you guys for continuing to provide an outlet for my creativity, however dorky it might be. As long as inspiration keeps striking, I'll keep making new stuff for this game.
http://mtm2.com/MTM2/Trucks/trucks.php?search=HD+Customs